In an interview on Environmental Change

Lastly, you’ve chosen a spy thriller, Lionel Davidson’s Kolymsky Heights.

I absolutely love this. It’s a very, very skilful thriller, and very innovative. Lionel Davidson came up with this extremely unusual hero, a Canadian Indian from one of the tribes in British Columbia. The character is given great linguistic abilities and the looks that are typical of the Arctic peoples. And the whole plot revolves around getting him into this incredibly secret base in a very, very closed and remote part of Siberia, to discover a great secret. As it happens, it’s a place I’ve been to, not the base, which is fictional, but the town and region of Cherskii. What I love about this thriller is that the author is just wonderfully sympathetic to the Arctic peoples, who get a slightly rough press sometimes. There is the assumption among many that you’ve got the eskimos living in igloos up in the Arctic, and that’s about it. What this book does is delve into the richness of the different cultures, into the diversity of the different peoples there, their rivalries, and where they feel united. It’s all in the context of the racism of the Russians, who never liked or seem to have respected the people of the Arctic, or even the Arctic itself, except as something to exploit. And it’s a theme that rings very true. Particularly under the Soviet Union, the different peoples of the Arctic were collectivised and there was industrialisation of the crudest kind, exploitation of minerals, and ghastly tales of the gulags. This is all up in this region that’s now going through extraordinary change with the melt opening up great competition for resources, for new shipping routes and for control. The Russians planting a Russian flag on the sea bed at the North Pole was really a signal of intent, that they see the Arctic as their backyard. The book was written long before that event happened, which was only three years ago. But it’s all part of the context there. And I just think it’s a cracking story. I’ve reread it a number of times.

So the hero is a kind of Arctic James Bond?

Yes, he is this great, counter-intuitive character. He’s absolutely anti-establishment and loathes the CIA, but he’s quite intrigued by this mission that’s come up and he realises he’s the only person who can do it. And it’s such a clever way to get into the Arctic peoples, to have someone who is not only incredibly sympathetic to them, but looks like them. Everyone I know who’s read it just loves the guy. He’s difficult and unusual and lovable.